eBay finishes PayPal Acquisition

Aidenn writes "As some may remember, eBay was in the process of merging with PayPal. It is finally finished. eBay has information here. news.com has a more complete story."

Comments

Will they revamp paypal?

[captainstupid]

I got the email from EBay yesterday, but they failed to address all of the issues with PayPal. They do mention that they'll phase out their BillPoint service, though.

One would hope that they'd completey revamp PayPal's customer service. EBay is a highly visible company. Hopefully this will encourage them to start treating PayPal customers better.

Re:Will they revamp paypal?

[turnstyle]

Personally, my experience with PayPal has always been very good. I use it to sell my software. Whenever I've called their free support number, I get a human within a few minutes -- and a human that can answer my questions.

Less Competition

[pgrote]

As the dotcom boom hits bottom you look around and notice that fewer and fewer services have competitors anymore. That's the way it has become in on-line payments. There are a couple of alternatives that may still unseat PayPal as the major player in the space, but now that eBay has them I doubt it.

Low barrier of entry means this and the auction space are ripe, but getting traction in it is hard.

What concerns me the most is the service aspect of the deal. PayPal has a bad reputation, but there is hope it will it will improve.

---
Go Daddy President Interview

Re:Less Competition

[King_TJ]

Another alternative I don't see used much, but which I've been relatively happy with myself, is c2it. (www.c2it.com)

They charge absolutely no transaction fees (well, at least so far -- but I'm sure that'd change if they got popular enough).

Honestly, I think much of PayPal's bad reputation would have been mirrored by any of these alternative online payment services, had they grown as large and as quickly as PayPal did.

It's easy to claim your cust. service is "much more responsive" when you only have 1/20th. the number of users.

Re:Less Competition

[dmoynihan]

As a guy whose website derives 80% of its revenues between Paypal and eBay I'm a little concerned about this merger. One great thing about the soon-to-be-defunct Billpoint service was that you could send an invoice for a "non-auction" item (overseas customers who didn't want to sign up for paypal but still hoped to pay by credit card), a feature I use a couple times a week.

The merchant account thing is getting a little better, though it's still a PITB to set up ("picture of my inventory? I sell digital goods..."), probably bank of america has the best deal currently.

I guess there can only be one Internet money though.

finally...

[MarvinMouse]

Now that there is a reasonably reliable company running PayPal. I am just going to wait for a few more to jump on the bandwagon.

Maybe now, electronic cash will become far more acceptable, and smaller vendors will be able to open shop online without having to bow down to Visa and Mastercard's absurd policies. (or having to demand cash payment, which makes online business meaningless really.)

EBay has shown auctions can be done effectively online, now maybe they'll show that E-Cash can be done as well.

The need for a better cash

[argoff]

IMHO the problems I've heard of for both ebay and paypal only highlight the need for a better digital cash system.

What we need is something that is trustworthy, anonymous (private from the prying eyes of 3rd parties), indenpendent of a government monetary authority or any centralized authority, easy to send and transfer electronicly, and with general predictability and liquidity in value.

for anonymity I was thinking there might be some kind of a scheme where you could reveal the identity of the selling party if you were willing to sacrifice the value of the digital cash they gave you.

Also, perhaps there's some type of a need, like computing cycles, storage, or some type of computing service that would have market value that could be actuated by this form of digital cash.

any thoughts?

But

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they buy it using paypal?

In a related story...

[dubiousmike]

Ebay tried to pay Paypal using Paypal. Becuase Paypal flagged the transaction as "suspect", Ebay's checking account with a balance of $1.2 mil has been frozen. Multiple calls to Paypal's customer service have gone unanswered and industry experts believe it may take up to 3 months before the situation can be rectified.

Better call the FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

Asked about the deal, an Ebay spokesperson described PayPal's management as "A++++++++++", calling them "VERY RESPONSIVE" and noting that they "WOULD DEFINITLY BUY FROM AGAIN." PayPal's feedback rating is 1283.

It turns out they just fell for some Finnish guy's scam (never send $1.5B of stock to a P.O. box!). He claimed he was selling PayPal "for a friend", but oddly became angry upon suggestion of sending it C.O.D. Unfortunately, due to their toothless fraud protection policies, it looks like they're just gonna have to suck it up and take the loss.

Better luck next time, eBay! They probably should have bought PayPal through an escrow service...

eBay

[rice_burners_suck]

This looks like good news for eBay, which has become quite an online marketplace, but a few small things bother me.

• PayPal is a very convenient system for moving money around. It's easy to pay from your checking account or credit card, and as such, it gives normal people the ability to "accept" credit cards as a form of payment. But, will PayPal slowly evolve into something that's only used on eBay, or will it continue to be operated as a standalone system for doing just what it does right now?
• What is very convenient about eBay is that you put a minimal amount of information into it to start an auction, and you can host a rather large amount of information on your own servers if you want. This gives you the ability to work with your buyers however you want, to simplify your logistics and make things efficient. Remember--there are some people who sell a LOT on eBay, and there are even companies whose sole purpose in life is to sell things that way. However, eBay has been implementing and increasing number of features in the past couple of years. Now, suddenly, they offer image hosting, with each image after the first costing some fee. And more recently, they have acquired PayPal, to support folks' payment requirements. My question is, will eBay remain the "open" system that it is today, giving you the choice of using whatever systems you want to get the job done, or will eBay become a closed system where auctions cost a lot more to place because you have to pay for every feature?

All in all, I think eBay is a really good system. I hope it stays that way, and doesn't turn to poop because some corporate jerk wants to be greedy.

Russian hackers / PayPal scam

[StuffYourReligion]

Yesterday, I received this scam e-mail from "service@paypal.com"
The sending IP was an AOL address: ACC1D4A2.ipt.aol.com [172.193.212.162]

The "click here" links, which I've broken for obvious reasons in the email below, led to this URL:
http://www.paypal.com@%77%77%77.%61%7A.%72%7 5/%70% 70%64

Which, unencoded, is:
http://www.paypal.com@http://www.az.ru/ppd/

And sure enough, it is an (insecure) page on www.az.ru asking you to enter your PayPal email address and password to "confirm" your account. If this is an old scam (this particular one; I was spoofing login screens on my college network in the 80s!), I haven't heard about it.

Here's the e-mail:
----------------------

Dear PayPal Customer,

This e-mail is to inform you of a recent update we have made to our systems. To avoid service interruption we require that you confirm your account as soon as possible. Please click here and take a moment to confirm your account.

Please follow the following steps:

1.) Click here to confirm your account.
2.) Your account will be updated in our system and you may continue using PayPal services without any interruptions.

Please note: If you fail to update your account, it will be 'flagged' with restricted status.

Thank you,
The Paypal Staff

***
Do not reply to this e-mail. For assistance, contact the customer service team.
***

PayPal rules - hope it doesn't change

[MarkWatson]

I know that some people have reasonable complaints against PayPal, but for me, their service rocks.

It took only a few minutes to sign up and add their canned HTML forms to my web site.

I write free web books, and I use PayPal to accept donations and it is also useful for accepting payment for consulting services and the few commercial products that I sell.

I did a fair amount of research re: getting a merchant account, etc., but I think that PayPal works out a little cheaper for me; it is also zero hassle.

One possible thing to worry about: they do have the right to freeze your bank account if a customer ever wants a refund and you don't have funds to cover the refund in your PayPal account. I have never been asked for a refund (after many, many transactions) but for safety I always just leave some money in my PayPal account - the interest that I loose in a year doing this is negligible compared to the costs of a merchant account, etc.

-Mark

Re:PayPal rules - hope it doesn't change

[squiggleslash]

I've had problems with PayPal where their "fraud" detection systems effectively made every transaction a potential nightmare. When I tried to talk to them about it, they sent me a canned response which answered a question I hadn't asked. When I replied, they sent the same canned response tacked, in classic MS email style, onto the front of the email chain. When I replied and asked them what was up, I received the same canned response. ad-nauseum. When I threatened to close the account, I received a canned "Please don't" response, which again failed to deal with any of the issues I raised.

I'm hoping that eBay taking over will deal with the problems I had. A minor issue - to do with delivery addresses and incorrect instructions on outgoing emails - made every PayPal transaction a gamble which would typically take a week to sort out if I "lost". I pretty much gave up on eBay for the most part thanks to that bunch of clowns, except for the occasional transaction I could do with Billpoint.

eBay needs to address PayPal's deficiencies. Billpoint was quicker, easier, and less moronic, when it came to auction transactions, and I hope desperately that Billpoint's advantages will migrate over to PayPal, not that PayPal's psychotic paranoid tendancies and cretinous customer "service" will become the only choice.